so-called

so-called

1. A phrase used to emphasize that a name or term for someone or something is commonly used. Next, we'll be reading the so-called master of English literature, William Shakespeare.
2. A phrase used to indicate the speaker's doubt about the appropriateness of the term being used to describe a person or thing. Oh, now my so-called best friend calls me. Where was she three weeks ago when I was in the hospital? My so-called smartphone has suddenly lost all ability to send a text.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • damn well
  • Fanny's your aunt
  • eggs is eggs
  • DYSWIDT?
  • 10-4
  • a cold day in Hell
  • as one does
  • Caturday
  • buggy
  • buggy whip
References in periodicals archive
His third prediction of interim councils appeared under various names to keep the Sinhalese in a state of blissful ignorance, first to form the 'Tsunami Joint Mechanism' and to the stage of proposing a Interim Self governing Authority (ISGA) as a part of "Peace Process' mediated by the so-called Peace Maker.
Monday an objection to the master plan drawn up by the so-called Israeli Civil
The Minister has refuted claims there has been any transaction with the so-called Ulama Council over the past years in any official manner nor granting them any legal capacity.
Regarding other claims made against the British military for so-called atrocities in other Middle East countries at the moment, I think this is a case of jumping on the bandwagon.
A member of Nato's Afghan force and a civilian contractor have been killed in the latest so-called insider attack by a member of the country's security forces, bringing the US death toll in the conflict up to 2,000.
Will someone explain the logic of our so-called laws?
Despite the near total lack of evidence, the number of so-called experts extolling the health benefits of organic foods is large and, arguably, growing.
President George Bush's admission of the existence of secret CIA prisons raises fresh questions over so-called 'torture flights' through UK airports, human rights group Liberty said last night.
Like almost all contemporary liberals, Ignatieff is an unabashed exponent of a woman's so-called right to choose to have her baby killed by abortion.
Legislation to create the so-called Securing America's Future Economy (SAFE) Commission has been introduced by Sen.
Austin does a good inventory of the little-known accomplishments of so-called cultural nationalism and lays bare some of the misconceptions about the "cultural" versus "revolutionary" nationalism dichotomy of the 1970s.
As opposed to this sacred cosmology, the new scientific cosmology built upon the work of Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton claims to know exactly what happened some five billion years ago, within the first ten seconds of the so-called Big Bang, which is generally taken as the beginning of the cosmos.
Religious Right activists and their congressional allies are huddling in Washington, D.C., to figure out how to ensure a large Election Day turnout of the so-called "values voters."
1, 2004, the so-called amended Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act went into effect.
In his State of the Union speech on January 31, 2006, Bush claimed that he used the authority given by "the Constitution and by statute" to authorize his so-called terrorist surveillance program in order to prevent future attacks.